Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring
by Itty Bitty Albatross
Summary: A brief, poetic look at four overlooked characters and the seasons they are reminiscent of. Clarisse La Rue, Katie Gardner, Travis Stoll, Grover Underwood. Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring.


Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters, or anything associated to Rick Riordan and his brilliant works.

Clarisse La Rue/Summer

She brushes the sweat away from her forehead

and takes a deep breath in of the humid, warm air.

It locks in her lungs as if she were drowning

but she knows she isn't because her heart keeps pounding,

adrenaline rushing.

The heat, the inescapable heat pushes at her

like a sentient creature.

She could escape, of course, but that means leaving,

leaving the training area to go to her cabin.

That's not home—it could never be home like here,

among the blades she used to prove herself

over and over again.

She proved herself to her father, her siblings, her enemies.

She proved she was as harsh and unrelenting

as the sun in the dog days of summer,

when you couldn't move for fear of overheating.

Taut muscle shining with hard-earned sweat shimmers

like the quivering, reflecting air above the surface of the horizon.

She pushes herself through sunburn and perspiration

right to the precipice of heat stroke.

She pushes, hard, against any wall she hits

like the heat waves that push across the country,

like the wildfires that blaze across the too-dry land.

Katie Gardner/Fall

She stepped out of her house and started walking

the long trail that winds through the woods.

Leaves fall, a statement to her long hair, blonde hair,

when they tangle up as though she herself is a plant.

To others, she should be a spring person,

as though Demeter only embodies new life.

But fall—autumn—is the real start of a new cycle.

Fall is when you see the fruit of the labor,

when you try to guess which plant

is going to survive the winter.

Her breath falls out in crisp, winding puffs,

she eyes the bark, the tough skin,

and wishes it was hers to wrap herself up in.

The sweaters, the jeans, the creases

that fall against her skin can't compare.

She hums to herself in an endless tune

she makes up as she goes along and counts

how many different colors pattern the foliage.

Scarlet, sienna, soft dirt browns,

and the rare pinhead of olive, lime, evergreen.

Travis Stoll/Winter

Soft curls brush the angular sides of his face

as the icy wind blows past him,

rushing along at a pace that reminds him of Connor.

Connor, who loves the warmth of Junes, July's, Augusts,

laughs at Travis every time he slips

on the crystalline ice that coats sidewalks and streets.

He loves the winters anyway, revels in the snap that hits

his ears and nose and fingertips every time he steps out the door.

Eventually they numb to where he can tap them and feel nothing

but the odd sensation of _not _feeling the sensation.

The snow crunches under his boots

but he can't hear the noise because snow muffles,

like a silencer on a gun, which he has never seen

despite practically being raised around weapons.

Besides, weapons were never his 'thing',

not like the other heroes who fought for their glory.

Travis wasn't a warrior,

not in the way people thought of when they thought 'warrior'.

He was a thief, a modern ninja, who snuck around.

Some found it easy to confuse with cowardice,

but it was less easy when you're bleeding out after a war

and two identical faces pop up above you, smeared with their own blood,

having risked grabbing pain killers that numb like sub-zero temperatures.

Grover Underwood/Spring

Panpipes whistle across the barely-budding leaves

as they unfurl, like a stop-motion video,

where things are sped up by a few hundred times.

Things come to life, everywhere, surrounding him,

sprouting up from the dead earth in victory.

It's a form of therapy—sitting for hours,

watching the ground and playing softly,

watching seeds burst up from the grit and dirt—

after so long, so many ages of watching failures and losses.

Spring is proof that things survive,

even if it looks like they're over and gone.

He muses and the song goes mournful as he thinks of

Pan, whom he let go,

Luke, whom he steered right and then wrong,

Thalia, Percy, Juniper, whom he almost (came _so close_) to losing.

He watches, surveys, as the leaves rustle

and bees and butterflies hover past in a lifelong search

for the spreading, vivid petals that house treasure,

guarded by thorns,

and isn't that an equally vivid analogy

hovering in the head of a secretly-poetic satyr?


End file.
